The rebels occupied several key cities last week

The systematic killings "almost certainly amounted to war crimes," according to Navi Pillay.

Her remarks came as the militants, led by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), were reported to have seized the strategic city of Tal Afar.

The rebels occupied several key cities last week, but some towns were retaken.

Security in Baghdad has been stepped up after the insurgents threatened to march on the capital.

Reports are emerging that an army helicopter has been shot down in fierce clashes near the city of Fallujah, located just 70km (45 miles) west of Baghdad.

President Barack Obama says the United States is deploying up to 275 military personnel to Iraq to protect American interests there.
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Analysis: Jim Muir, BBC News, Irbil
ISIS militants in Nineveh province (11 June 2014) Iran said it was ready to assist Iraq in its battle against ISIS insurgents, seen here in Nineveh

One reason Tal Afar was important for the government to hold was that the city was the state's only outpost in the entire province of Nineveh, which fell to the Sunni militants last week as the army collapsed.

It is also strategically significant, straddling the main highway from Mosul, the provincial capital, to the Syrian border.

However, assuming Tal Afar has indeed fallen to the militants, it does not mean they have a direct link to Syria - the border crossing at Rabia is controlled on the eastern side by Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, and on the western side by the Popular Protection Units (YPG), the armed wing of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), which is fiercely hostile to ISIS.

Tal Afar is important for other reasons too. Most of the areas through which the Sunni militants swept last week were largely Sunni populated. Tal Afar has a big Shia community, from the Turkmen minority, perhaps one reason why it held out longer than any other town in Nineveh.

Some observers believe it is important for Iran - which sees itself as the custodian of the Shia - that Tal Afar should not be allowed to fall, and that they would sooner or later wreak revenge, especially if abuses were committed during or after its capture.

the US sent 150 soldiers into Poland for military exercises

Mr Obama is also expected to reiterate America's support for its Nato allies in Europe and keep up pressure on Russia over its role in the crisis.

In April, the US sent 150 soldiers into Poland for military exercises amid growing tensions with Moscow.

Mr Obama's meetings in Warsaw are part of a European tour which will also take him to Belgium and France.
US troops arrive in Swidwin, Poland, on 23 April 2014 Poland saw 150 US troops arrive in April and they will be joined by a further 450 in the coming days

In Belgium, the US leader is expected to urge Western leaders to reaffirm their united position on Ukraine at a G7 meeting of major industrial nations.

The summit had been initially planned in Russia, but Western leaders later decided to boycott it following Moscow's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in March.

In France, Mr Obama will take part in ceremonies to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy.

President Vladimir Putin is also invited, but the White House has already made it clear that the American and Russian leaders will not hold formal bilateral talks.

Washington has repeatedly warned Moscow that it faces new sanctions if it refuses to de-escalate tensions in eastern Ukraine, where fierce fighting has continued between separatists and Ukrainian government troops.

On Monday, hundreds of rebels attacked a border command centre near the eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk,

Feast or famine?

By jadelung, 08:54

Feast or famine? The relationship between art and food is a long one, and artists in the 20th Century have included cooking and eating in their practices. The Futurists in interwar Turin mounted over-the-top, deeply unpalatable banquets that replaced pasta with steel and sandpaper; wet cat food the artists of Fluxus in 1960s New York held ‘eat-ins’ that featured only white dishes, or ten different flavoured mashed potatoes. Tastier stuff was to be found at Food, a restaurant founded in SoHo in 1971 by artist Gordon Matta-Clark, which was at once an artists’ canteen and an artwork itself. More recently the Thai artist Rirkrit Tiranavija, subject of an upcoming retrospective at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, has offered free meals in his exhibitions, encouraging conviviality among gallery-goers rather than quiet contemplation. But the desire for chefs to declare themselves artists – more precisely, to brand their cooking not just artistic but actually art itself – is a newer thing. Earlier chefs such as François Vatel or Auguste Escoffier might have called themselves artists, but it’s important to unpack that term: it was used as a means to analogise their work to painting and sculpture, vitamin cnot as a claim that no distinction existed. The expansion of the boundaries of contemporary art, however, has let chefs such as Adrià say they aren’t just like artists, but are artists. And this has gone hand-in-hand with a boom in popularity for high-end cuisine, seen everywhere from Top Chef to the bookshops. When Nathan Myhrvold, a multimillionaire foodie with a taste for technology, published his 2,400-page Modernist Cuisine, at a list price of $625, his publisher deemed it a vanity project and only printed a few copies. It went on to become the most profitable cookbook of all time, and has generated – what else? – an art exhibit. Hard to swallowInteractive Flat Panel Display

Sega adds Virtua Tennis Challenge to its free mobile game lineup

By jadelung, 07:38

Sega’s making good on its promise to continue adding titles to its Sega Forever library of mobile games – the latest is the Dreamcast classic Virtua Tennis Challenge. The Sega Forever model sees the game maker releasing games from its previous console generations as free-to-play ad supported mobile games, with an optional in-app purchase to get rid of the adds permanently HKUE DSE.
The addition of Virtua Tennis Challenge brings in another of its existing redesigned mobile games, which have already been tailored for use on iOS and Android devices. The game used to cost $5 outright, but now it’s free as mentioned, and a $1.99 one-time purchase will unlock the ad-free version Cloud Hosting.
Sega’s doing mobile gaming right with this approach to exploiting its back catalog, giving people a way to build up their library of classics on devices they’ll always have close to hand without spending a fortune. It’s a far better experience than, say, Nintendo’s classic console sales on its home and portable gaming systems, which tend to be locked in and not passed between hardware generations HKUE DSE .
https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/12/sega-adds-virtua-tennis-challenge-to-its-free-mobile-game-lineup/

Loneliness is a feeling

By jadelung, 08:56

Loneliness is a feeling I know very well. I live in an apartment with no one but my dog, and I don't get a whole lot of company because most of my friends have moved to another town, got married and had a family, or simply lost touch due to life happening. As someone who considers himself a loner, I loved the peace and quiet at first, but I found myself feeling very lonely within a few months. My space went from clean to chaos, my productivity crashed and burned, my thoughts took a turn for the worse, and I couldn't find much interest in anything more than watching movies on Netflix. After living a few months in a haze of sloth, I realized I had a serious problem and decided to learn how to live a happy life alone. This article tackles six key things I learned along the way。 1. Take Care of Your Home When you're not around other people, it is easy to lose interest in tidying up your home. You might find yourself with a sky high pile of dishes and mountains of clutter everywhere you turn if you're not careful. Even if you don't have a roommate or company that frequently walks in your door, it is in your best interest to clean house at least once per week. Pretty renew美容 If your home is a disorganized wreck, expect to feel stressed out as soon as you walk in the door. A clean home free from clutter will help you feel happy and organized。 2. Find Beauty in the Ordinary If you don't see beauty in your world, you're not looking hard enough. If you're home alone and feeling down, walk outside and spend some time with nature. Watch the birds fly and admire their elaborate flight formation. Listen to dogs barking at each other in the neighborhood and think to yourself, “I wonder what they could possibly be talking about? Look at that big, old tree that is the size of a giant （and if you're feeling limber, why not try to climb it?）。 Plant some flowers, a vegetable garden, or a small tree in your back yard. Go to the park, walk on a nature trail, clear your thoughts, listen to the sounds of the forest, and be in awe of the beauty that's right in front of you。 史雲遜 3. Watch Out for Noisy Thoughts Your thoughts can be your best friend and worst enemy. Have you ever noticed that if you find yourself thinking even a single negative thought, it inevitably spirals out of control until you have a nasty chorus of Mental Monsters taking over your brain? If you find yourself thinking, “I feel so lonely right now,” it's easy to keep that thought process going in the wrong direction until thoughts like, “I will always be alone,” or “no one will ever love me,” creep up on you。 Be aware of what you're thinking about and stop your negative thoughts before they grow into Mental Monsters that are much harder to control. If you find yourself stressing out, do something that relaxes you. Light some candles or incense, take a nice hot bubble bath, perform some gentle yoga poses, or play soothing music。外傭

narcissism

By jadelung, 08:03

CIn an unusual unanimous decision, the group awarded the honor to two syllables which, when combined in a particular order, best describe the paradoxical（矛盾的，诡论的） nexus of narcissism（自恋） and shared social experience known as the "selfie."
In case you aren't as hip as a reference librarian, here's the official definition for selfie (sometimes "selfy"):
a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website.
The word was originally added to Oxford's quite broad online dictionaries in August. Being declared the "it" word for 2013 means that selfies have been all over this year. Indeed, in its blog post announcing the selection, Oxford explained, "If it is good enough for the Obamas or the pope, then it is good enough for Word of the Year."
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Some credit is likely due to Instagram for taking selfies this far, and I'm a little surprised that instagram, the verb, (as in: "I'm totally going instagram that sunset with some hella-subtle filters") has not yet made it into the Oxford vernacular（方言）.
Then again, selfies were being taken long before Instagram. According to Oxford Dictionaries' research, the phrase has been spotted online as early as 2002 in forum postings. MySpace and Flickr first helped popularize the term, but it wasn't until 2012 that it began to surface in mainstream media. It really took off this year, though -- with the word's frequency of usage increasing five-fold between March and August.
So it appears selfies are here to stay for a while, which is OK with me, but I am concerned about the creation of related terms that Oxford also makes note of, such as "helfie" (a picture of one's own hair) or "belfie" (a picture of one's own posterior).
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The old phenomenon of body parts pressed against the glass of the office copier was bad enough; the last thing we need is a belfie meme. The only thing worse might be the meta-meme in response to such a trend -- and I really don't have any interest in seeing my Facebook feed filled with "barfies."China business studies

A longtime

By jadelung, 09:24

This video image shows police officers beating a black driver named Rodney King. The 1991 event helped start one of the worst race riots in American history . From VOA Learning English, welcome to This Is America in Special English. I’m Kelly Jean Kelly. And I’m Jim Tedder. Today we take you to Los Angeles , California. We talk about improvements in race relations between the police and community groups since the riots more than 10 years ago. Then we look at the popularity of environmentally friendly cars in the region. And finally we hear an attempt to define Los Angeles in a song. Los Angeles Riots In 1992, Los Angeles suffered riots after a jury found four white police officers not guilty in the beating of a black man, Rodney King. The beating took place after a high-speed car chase. The incident was videotaped by someone nearby and shown on television. It increased racial tensions in areas of the city. The riots were the worst in modern American history. Over 50 people died and many others were injured. National Guard troops had to help stop the violence. Police Captain Phillip Tingirides says community relations were hard for a long time after the LA riots.史雲遜有效 “The everyday community folks were angry. There was some hatred towards us, for how LAPD had treated the community over a number of years prior.” The LAPD — the Los Angeles Police Department — has been working to improve community relations. For instance, Captain Tingirides says the police have programs like reading to children in school and coaching sports teams. Police officers hold holiday parties in housing projects and give away small gifts. Captain Tingirides says one goal of community policing is to build relations before problems develop. “So that when you have a problem, you know who you can go and talk to. You have already some sort of connection with that person. And that's what's making the big difference.” Jerome Bynum has been to jail several times over the years. He says police behavior toward the criminal suspects they arrest is different from the past. “They used to beat you up, then take you to jail, but I think they're getting better as far as how they treat the people in the street.” A longtime critic of the LAPD agrees that relations with the police have improved since the riots. Najee Ali of Project Islamic Hope believes the situation will keep getting better. “I think we now see a genuine partnership that's authentic, and more importantly, crime has dropped because we now see community policing in our neighborhoods throughout South LA and the city. So I'm very optimistic that things will continue in the future to improve.” Murder and most other serious crimes have decreased in Los Angeles over the last ten years. Crime has also fallen in other cities in the United States. In 2012, Police Chief Charlie Beck called Los Angeles “the safest big city in America.”多種維他命

Anzac Day flight orders 'a shambles'`

The Air Force helicopter pilot facing charges over the 2010 Anzac Day Iroquois crash which killed three servicemen says his instructions for the flight were "a shambles".

Flight Lieutenant Dan Pezaro, 30, on Thursday faced a tribunal at Ohakea Air Base, charged with negligently failing to perform a duty under the Armed Forces Discipline Act.2D Handheld Scanner

The tribunal will decide whether Flt Lt Pezaro will face a court martial for not aborting the mission when the weather turned bad.

He was leader of the three Iroquois helicopter formation flying from Ohakea to Wellington, to take part in a flyover of Wellington's Anzac Day dawn service when the second helicopter crashed into hills at Pukerua Bay apartments for rent in hong kong .